Sunday, 2 January 2011

Is that PA?

I've been showing Andrew the full horror of the TV of my childhood. Andy Pandy. Rag Tag and Bobtail. Billy Cotton's Band Show.

"This is brilliant, Andrew. We can put together a whole evening of genuine 1965 telly. A whole two hours. They even have the crappy adverts with the cut-glass voice-over. That would be fun, wouldn't it?"

"No. It's crap, dad."

He has a point.

But we did trip theatrically over the Till Death us do Part christmas special from 1966 while wandering around the unlit cellar of sixties TV.

Next to the wireless. On the sideboard. That's a pin back there. What's chalked on it? Is that PA?

Great! My question: Was it bought to last a whole week, or only for special occasion like family reunion? By the second or third day, the ale would have been completly flat, no? I read somewher that Tolkien, in the 20-30 I guess, had a barrel of beer in the house, like this. I didn't drank a pin of ale by himself in one day, no? This question always puzzled me.

Having a cask on the sideboard must have looked a bit old-fashioned by that time. I remember those days and nobody my family knew did that. I mean, my family were ex-publicans and keen beer drinkers, but we made do with those quart bottles with the internal screw stoppers (Strong's Bitter). I say "we" - I wasn't allowed to drink beer of course...Proper cask conditioned beer should have kept about 5 days and wouldn't have been completely flat if you hard spiled it.